Raith Rovers welcome Celtic to Stark's Park today for their Scottish Cup meeting. Manager Grant Murray can include David Smith who is on-loan from Hearts after agreement was reached to extend the winger's stay until the end of the season. Murray's message to his players was a simple one as he explained: "We played really well away to the First Division leaders Morton last week. We did not deserve to lose 1-0 and all I have asked the players to do is to play as well as they did in that game but to take our chances. Our strikers are usually pretty deadly in front of goal so I cannot be too critical of them. Hopefully they can show how good they really are against Celtic." Celtic can call on the services of 'keeper Fraser Forster after he recovered from a neck injury. Winger James Forrest is back from a hamstring injury but forward Georgios Samaras (hamstring) and left-back Emilio Izaguirre (knee) are out. Celtic manager Neil Lennon is confident that his side will be up for the game against the Irn-Bru First Division side after losing out on the chance of a domestic treble after losing to St Mirren in the Scottish Communities League Cup Semin-final. Lennon said: "I'd like to think so. We have a really tough game and we will treat it with respect and try to progress in that competition. I am not going to dwell on last week, it was disappointing but there was a great reaction on Wednesday so hopefully we are up and running again. It is a different challenge and a different competition, so we have to get our mindset right and try to get a foothold in the game pretty quickly.'' The two sides met at Celtic Park in the third-round of the Scottish Communities League Cup in September when striker Gary Hooper grabbed four goals in a 4-1 home win. Lennon, though, will not read too much into that scoreline as he prepares for the cramped conditions at Stark's Park. He said: "It was a good game actually, it was pretty open for a long period. They equalised but as the game went on we gradually got better and we got a good result and Gary got four goals which was a tremendous effort on his part. But this will be a different environment. It is a smaller ground and it will be packed and I'm sure it will be a great atmosphere and I'm pretty sure the Raith fans will be pretty vociferous. So we need to be ready for that and match whatever they throw at us."
Source: ScottishFitba
Source: FOOTYMAD
